Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Jul 16, 2016 11:11 am

GURPS.

For the question "how do I stick weird shit with basically normal people who can still win through robust mechanical representation" the answer is GURPS. I couldn't tell you what splats you'd want to walk you through building your particular game out of it though, that'd be more something their forum nerds like doing.

Also contains some math, I guess, but not more than D&D or anything.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Jul 17, 2016 7:21 am

I was reading a RIFTS (TM) Dimension Book, and I know that's my fault and I shouldn't have done so, but I noticed something:

D&D has Demons (Evil aligned extra-planar entities that basically live in Hell) versus Devils (Evil aligned extra-planar entities that basically live in a different Hell), always at war with each other possibly more than against the forces of Good. This has been the case for a very long time, possibly going back as far as 1Ed?

Warham has four flavours of Demon, each in opposed factions (for stupid reasons), and they hate the opposing faction more than they hate anyone else.

RIFTS (TM) has Demons (Evil aligned extra-planar entities that basically live in Hell) versus Deevils (not Devils, Deevils are a trademark of Kev. Evil aligned extra-planar entities that basically live in a different Hell), always at war with each other possibly more than against anyone else.

Why is this such a common thing? Is it a Tolkienverse thing that I never bothered to read? A Vance thing? Something from the Bible or its assorted "some dude wrote a fanfic and society absorbed it and assumed it's actually part of the main text that they never read" (ie Inferno)? Pretty sure this one doesn't go to "When in doubt, Dune".

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sun Jul 17, 2016 10:04 am

As far as I know, D&D originates this one. You don't really see it outside of RPGs and their derivates, you'll notice.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Jul 17, 2016 2:22 pm

Koumei wrote:I was reading a RIFTS (TM) Dimension Book, and I know that's my fault and I shouldn't have done so, but I noticed something:

D&D has Demons (Evil aligned extra-planar entities that basically live in Hell) versus Devils (Evil aligned extra-planar entities that basically live in a different Hell), always at war with each other possibly more than against the forces of Good. This has been the case for a very long time, possibly going back as far as 1Ed?

Warham has four flavours of Demon, each in opposed factions (for stupid reasons), and they hate the opposing faction more than they hate anyone else.

RIFTS (TM) has Demons (Evil aligned extra-planar entities that basically live in Hell) versus Deevils (not Devils, Deevils are a trademark of Kev. Evil aligned extra-planar entities that basically live in a different Hell), always at war with each other possibly more than against anyone else.

Why is this such a common thing? Is it a Tolkienverse thing that I never bothered to read? A Vance thing? Something from the Bible or its assorted "some dude wrote a fanfic and society absorbed it and assumed it's actually part of the main text that they never read" (ie Inferno)? Pretty sure this one doesn't go to "When in doubt, Dune".

It's basically an artifact of D&D's two-axis alignment system being applied to the cosmology, thus requiring that there be a Lawful Hell and a Chaotic Hell.

That being said, its also a good explanation for why demons haven't killed everyone without making Heaven too powerful and interventionist.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Jul 17, 2016 3:45 pm

Are there chaotic and lawful good angels that get into fights too?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Jul 17, 2016 3:47 pm

They've tried, but the attempts have been half-hearted and not successful, since the Good part of the alignment kind of discourages infighting.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Jul 18, 2016 1:30 pm

I believe that it is also an attempt to avoid 'monolithic evil'. Evil doesn't get along with evil as well as good gets along with good. It's not just team jerseys, even if it works out that way most of the time. Factions within each group also oppose each other. From what Paizo says, Demogorgon is directly in conflict with himself more thsn with anyone else in the cosmos.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Mon Jul 18, 2016 8:55 pm

D&D 3.5 Stuff For People Better At Thinking Ahead Than Me:

Does absolutely anything important change if you allow a Ranger to function as a Druid in all ways (including making them function as a Druid of their Ranger level) in regards to Animal Companions, and institute a CR limit equal to their Ranger/Druid level as to which creatures can be animal companions and do away with the list?

Also, does absolutely anything important change if you allow the Paladin to gain their mount from level 1, and use a similar CR limitation for what animals can serve as their mounts?

By anything important I mean does it break the game beyond the obvious (Animal Companion is actually a better character than the Ranger, Mount is better than the Paladin, etc).

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Jul 18, 2016 9:00 pm

virgil wrote:They've tried, but the attempts have been half-hearted and not successful, since the Good part of the alignment kind of discourages infighting.

Nah, Good makes infighting easier. Just look at the history of the world. The vast majority of war is white-on-white.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Jul 18, 2016 9:08 pm

RelentlessImp wrote:Does absolutely anything important change if you allow a Ranger to function as a Druid in all ways (including making them function as a Druid of their Ranger level) in regards to Animal Companions, and institute a CR limit equal to their Ranger/Druid level as to which creatures can be animal companions and do away with the list?

The companion absolutely shouldn't have a CR equal to the PC's level, as that by definition makes the ranger/paladin more powerful than their level.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Tue Jul 19, 2016 4:16 am

So Exalted is kind of a neat setting with rules that are just a big, steaming pile of hobo sick, and 3rd edition didn't make it any better.

I've seen this board build their own versions of D&D3, WoD and Shadowrun; when is someone going to take a crack at exalted?

I've thought about it, but my ideal Exalted is D&D with Dragon Ball Z power levels, so the thought of writing bureaucracy charms makes me want to fuck off and play Dynasty Warriors instead.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Jul 19, 2016 5:14 am

I started but decided I wasn't that interested after all. I kind of like the idea of a dicepool fantasy game (just to try something different if nothing else), and for people suddenly waking up as Player Characters tasked with doing X (based on their type) and being given stupid amounts of power to do it, and with everyone having some kind of tragic destiny built in, with various actions causing that to creep ever closer (as a replacement to Limit, Paradox etc. and a hard-coding of the way every group managed to get betrayed and fucked over in some way). That's all cool stuff.

But then there was the whole "Writing an entire system", "Setting out a nice pile of skills and making them all relevant with combat charms, yes that includes Sailing and Etiquette", and "Making a sizeable set of Castes where each has their own Task and also there is minimal skill overlap" and I remembered I had drinks that needed consuming.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jul 19, 2016 5:27 pm

The problem is that no one likes Exalted. I'm not saying that as some sort Yogi Berra Koan or some sort of dismissive hipsterism, I'm dead fucking serious: there is not one person who actually likes Exalted. There are people who think they like Exalted. There are people who say they like Exalted. And there are various reasons for that. But there aren't any people anywhere who actually like Exalted.

The basic issue is that Exalted isn't a coherent thing that you could even understand, let alone actually have positive feelings about it as a thing in itself. Even at its most basic level it is hundreds of thousands of words generated procedurally by the Hamlet Typing Monkeys. Throw in the expansions and it simply becomes more bloated while remaining as completely disjointed and without point or purpose after a dozen books as it was with only one.

People can be, and frequently are, inspired by various things written into Exalted. But only in the sense that there are people who think a particular cloud looks funny or the warbling of a stream produces a lovely melody. The things in Exalted that catch your imagination on fire are not the things that I think are cool, or that FatR wants to roleplay around, or whatever. And more importantly and damningly, the elements that draw you to the unordered heap that are Exalted rule and setting elements are not in any sense designed to be part of the whole. Or any whole. They are written by different authors working at cross purposes with no fundamental agreement as to what they were even trying to accomplish, let alone what methodologies should be employed to get to any goals. Here, I'll go quote myself from AncientHistory and my review of Lunars, because it highlights this fundamental point:

Me wrote:I don't think it can be said enough how non-user-friendly this book actually is. Those backgrounds that have been changed don't tell you everything that they do, only how they are different. And the backgrounds that haven't been changed aren't listed at all. Not even a little heading followed by “see the Solars book because fuck you.” So the only way to know for sure that you actually have to use the description of a background in the Solars book unaltered is to read the entire Lunars book and check to make sure it isn't listed. So I'm pretty sure the “Allies” background isn't mentioned, so I'd go read the Solars book. But if I just missed it or it's somewhere else in the book or something, then I'm wrong. The game is seriously demanding that you work backwards from the negative information of things not being mentioned in a 250 page book that required you to read a 350 page book. It's beyond simply having rules that are secret because they are in obscure places – this game has some pretty important rules that exist because they are never mentioned at all.

I think there's actually a mathematical proof that it is logically impossible to know for sure what rules Lunar players are actually supposed to use to make or play their characters.

The point is that not only is it logically impossible for any player to know with certainty what the rules say, it's equally certain that the authors didn't have similar understandings of what the rules even were, and it's a comparable truism that whatever fucking mind caulk you're using to have a semi-workable derivative of Exalted in your brain has been compiled with different inputs and outputs than any semi-workable version coming from any other person's version. You're one of the blind men, and Exalted is the elephant. And you can't escape this metaphor, because it's an invisible elephant that was designed by other blind men.

If you made a version of Exalted that was good, or even simply internally consistent, you would turn off and offend other people who think they like Exalted. Because Exalted only continues to have "fans" by being Schrodinger's fucking Cat. As soon as you open the box, some number of fans will be turned off because the cat can only actually be alive or dead or at that point. And since fucking every little thing about Exalted in both the crunch and the fluff is in a permanent state of quantum uncertainty, the number of cat boxes you'll have to open will definitely turn off absolutely everyone.

Exalted is unfixable because it does not have an agreed upon articulatable concept. You could make a "Version of Exalted" that was internally consistent and had knowable, usable rules and fluff, but it wouldn't be Exalted or even really a version of Exalted because it would be an independently verifiable thing. And Exalted is not. And never was.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Jul 19, 2016 5:41 pm

Jawa & I had certainly contemplated the idea of converting Exalted, but we ran into the same trouble as Koumei; finding our collective interest in the whole thing woefully insufficient in the face of such a demanding task.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Tue Jul 19, 2016 7:20 pm

Hiram McDaniels wrote:So Exalted is kind of a neat setting with rules that are just a big, steaming pile of hobo sick, and 3rd edition didn't make it any better.

Speaking as someone who has attempted to write both a massive quantity of setting material and a fanfiction work of substance for Exalted, I have to say that no, the setting is not 'kind of neat.' It is a horrific mess that has to be wrestled with brutally in order to be made coherent for even a short time or function on the lower end of its power scale.

There are pieces of the setting that are cool, but since Exalted basically takes surrealist fantasy, dark fantasy, and wuxia fantasy tropes and throws them all at the wall to produce a Jackson Pollock version of a game, that's not surprising. But Frank is totally correct in that everyone sees Exalted totally differently - in much that same way that everyone will describe Jackson Pollock paintings differently.

People want a cool anime/wuxia style setting that has in-depth lore and provides for high-powered play and Exalted presents the illusion that it provides this, but it is only an illusion and when you peel it back there's nothing there.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Wed Jul 20, 2016 5:35 pm

I agree with what Frank and Mechalich said.

I can only add for those who might find their statements a little hard to believe that the authors have never agreed on something as basic to their concept as how Solar Exaltation actually works (and no, the intended scope of the game does not allow to sweep such stuff under their rug). Is it personally awarded by the sun god? Is it fully autonomous? Is it just work of some motherfucking celestial bureaucrat who keeps unused Exaltations in his drawer (yes, I'm still mad that anyone considered the last idea good enough to be printed, no, I'm only exaggerating insofar as a literal drawer probably was not involved in canon)? What criteria are used for selecting Exalted candidates and if they have anything to do with virtue, why Exaltations can observably go to losers and dirtbags? The answer at this point is basically "lol, dunno, pick what you want".

Now apply the same principle throughout the game.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Jul 21, 2016 6:47 am

Exalted strikes me as a game that would benefit more from abstraction than fine details. When you're shattering mountains with one glowy punch it shouldn't mechanically matter if your 2 meter long sword is straight or curved. Well, at least in my version of Exalted.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Thu Jul 21, 2016 7:23 am

Well, you can absolutely play Exalted using FATE or some other rules-lite system if you want. People do that, and the resolution mechanics of FATE, despite their obvious flaws, are vastly superior to Exalted's in pretty much every way - especially if you can get a decent GM and get the gaming group on roughly the same page regarding what different Exalted types/essence levels ought to be capable of doing.

But Exalted's problems are not limited to its terrible mechanics. I mean, I wrote a novella for Exalted (and part of another one) and I was able to ignore the problematic mechanic, and in fact since I was only really interested in the dragon-blooded I was able to ignore all the other Exalted classes entirely, but I still felt like I had to wrestle brutally with the setting to make it do anything fun. It's just schizophrenic and impossible to pin down, it wants to mean too many different things at once. If I can compare it to something like Claymore - which has similar themes about cursed super-people and a world full of suffering - Exalted looks incomparably bad (full disclosure: I am incredibly biased about Claymore) when it comes to getting theme and mood straight.

That being said, you can hammer Exalted into something fun if you're willing to do a lot of work, but it's mostly a function of finding the 10% of the material that appeals most to you and building a setting-within-a-setting out of that. This is viable because of just how much stuff is crammed into Exalted, but no two groups are going to take the same 10% as the important parts.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Jul 26, 2016 4:17 am

Was there ever a TOME version of pathfinder's eidolons and synthesis summoner?

Being a True Fiend and building your own monster is close in concept but still different from being a stand/persona user.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Tue Jul 26, 2016 4:04 pm

Totemist is sort of like a Synthesist.

Prak made something based on the summoner IIRC. Might need to refluff it somewhat for most campaigns though.

Edit: Found it

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Jul 26, 2016 4:06 pm

Frank's Pokemaster certainly fills a similar niche to the eidolon-style summoner.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jul 26, 2016 9:18 pm

radthemad4 wrote:Totemist is sort of like a Synthesist.

Prak made something based on the summoner IIRC. Might need to refluff it somewhat for most campaigns though.

Edit: Found it

I literally forgot all about that project

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Aug 08, 2016 8:42 am

Let's say I wanted to use the Suicide Squad concept for D&D.

What's a good way to do the implant bombs without making shit up? I mean, I could stat something up, but if I can just use something from the books, I'd rather do that.

So far I'm looking at the Necrotic spells from Libris Mortis. Each squad member gets a cyst, and the person controlling them uses Necrotic Scrying to keep an eye on them. If they try to run, the controller triggers a contingent Necrotic Termination on the character in question.

Seems to work out decently, and the Waller-expy can just use an Efreet or something to get a Staff of Necrosis, granting use of the spells. Only problems are that the Necrotic save or dies also create skulking cysts (which could be handwaved) and only work on living creatures, which limits the possible characters, and I'm a bit less ok with handwaving.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Aug 08, 2016 11:48 am

The D&D analog to that plot line is a geas or a mark of justice. It compels you to serve on pain of some bad effect.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Aug 08, 2016 7:42 pm

That's a good point, though Geas has the same "won't work on undead" problem (well, ok, I already planned on using Tome, so as long they're dark minded, I guess it would).

Both of them seem somewhat lacking for the Suicide Squad plot, though. "If you decide to fuck off, you take 3d6/day//If you piss me off, you take a -6 to your favourite ability score"

Thinking about using Contingent Last Judgement, though, especially since it's a Real In World Consequence (TM) that doesn't actually stop the game, they're just in Hell, now.